Watch Me Entertain Myself!

Sacha Guitry once said, "You can pretend to be serious, but you can't pretend to be witty." Oh yes, I'm the great pretender.

(pilot episode: 20 January 2004)

Saturday, September 18, 2010

Charm Attack

We were on the plane, we were sleepy and we didn’t have the energy to continue with the conversation.

So now I gave it some more thought.

A person’s charm consists of several factors that come into play. Physical appearance can play a part; cute can certainly charm someone more than one who looks like a piranha. However, ugly pugs can also be charming.

Charm is a quality that the owner cannot assess; it is a quality that radiates from a person and thus is observable by others. What the owner can observe, though, are the effects of his efforts to charm people.

I believe charming people are genuinely interested in other people; it’s that interest that charms. Given that, I also believe that natural-born charming people are a rarity; in fact, I believe charm is mostly learned.

Everybody starts out the same, but some learn at a young age to be interested in others. And if they develop that interest so well, it became second nature to them; thus, we see them as “naturally charming.”

There are those who develop much later on the skill needed to charm others, which is basically showing interest—and maybe even a bit of what CC described as flirting. But really, what is the best flirt if not someone who makes you feel like you’re the most special person at the moment, someone who is most interesting to them?

When people learn how to charm others, they’ll discover that it’s easier to charm those who interest them in the first place; to those who don’t, they don’t even bother. These people appear to be able to turn their charm on and off. But the most charming people are the ones who are interested in everyone; their charm attack is an indiscriminate shooting spree, sparing no one.